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Sports of The Times; Marion Jones Needs a Quiet Understanding

The Olympics continued here tonight, despite the revelation that Marion Jones's husband had joined a thousand Bulgarian weight lifters in the holding pen for drug cheats who claim the laboratory lied.

Cathy Freeman enthralled two nations, Australia and the Aborigines who wallow beneath its standard of living. Michael Johnson ran in the shadow of others as dynamically as he had in the spotlight of Atlanta. The American Stacy Dragila became the first woman to claim pole-vaulting gold, on a night track and field managed to soar above the sordid matter of C. J. Hunter's announced failed drug test at a meet in Norway in July.

''The sad thing is that we're here for something other than sport,'' Craig Masback, the chief operating officer of USA Track & Field had said earlier in the night. ''And the challenge facing Marion Jones has only been made more challenging by the developments here.''

This was one of the few unadulterated comments he made at a news conference clearly striving for triage, not triumph. Under the circumstances, sitting in front of a couple of hundred skeptics in the middle of a public relations boondoggle, what could Masback really say?

How does anyone who saw in Jones the quintessential American star and our savior of these Games when she won the 100 meters last Saturday night take a second look when she returns to the track tomorrow without noticing a little bloom off the rose? It will be the understandable human reaction, given what we know about Hunter, her husband, her career director and spiritual guide.

Yet barring further announcements or International Amateur Athletic Federation outings, our editing process between mind and mouth should be on 24-hour alert, lest we make a huge leap worthy of a medal.

Before we begin making character indictment-by-association, before we declare anyone a blemished phenomenon just as she has gotten off the block, let us remind ourselves that regardless of what her husband has been caught doing, Jones can still have America's blessings as she goes for more gold.

''In light of the recent situation, I hope she'll be able to continue to focus on what she's here to do,'' Johnson said in quite the statesmanlike manner after winning the men's 400 meters in an Olympic Stadium holding more than 112,000 people. ''Hopefully, all of you will allow her to focus on what she's here to do.''

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We as a nation have done it before, paused for reflection after revelation, upon learning two summers ago that Mark McGwire was hammering his way toward the baseball record book with the aid of little bottled helpers. McGwire wasn't breaking baseball's drug rules, but that was because baseball didn't have any. He was, on the other hand, participating in and essentially promoting pharmacology, the plague of performance enhancement, and isn't that where the credibility gap in the Olympics lies?

America wasn't ready to take down a man in the process of rewriting the storybook of our long, lost youth, so McGwire got a free pass, a deferred trial for when androstenedione is as widely denounced in the States as it happens to be here.

It has always been easier for Americans to heap scorn on Olympians, these disposable heroes, whom we only look to every four years. As sports ethicists, we have a shifting set of standards, a selective morality. ''How can we believe anything we see here?'' is what you kept hearing around the news media center tonight. Fair question, but we will also go home next week to watch baseball players, who may well be mixing steroids with their crackerjack, for all we know. No one cries to shut the parks down, but when it comes to the Olympics, we are still demanding purity from a movement that long ago lost its innocence, no matter what the mythmakers and marketers claim.

The world has grown tired of our high-mindedness, our appointed commissions, with their how-to manuals for a kinder, cleaner Olympics. That explains the released test results for nandrolone and testosterone Hunter was said to have failed in Oslo not long after he passed the same tests at the United States trials in July, according to Masback. The message came through loud and clear, and was echoed today by a variety of international sources: shut up and clean up your own house.

Hunter, the world champion in the shot-put, cited a knee injury when he withdrew from the United States team. He said today that he would ''vigorously'' contest the report, but he's not competing here, and at this point he is merely the husband who has rained on his wife's reign.

As with many track and field stars, there have been whispers about Marion Jones, but she isn't Michelle Smith, the swimmer who married a doper and became a sensation overnight. Suspicion isn't fact, and the fact is that Jones has been a blur since she was 10. Now she has this controversy to run from, as she goes for more gold.